It Takes a Community
By Bob Adgate
Sometimes God uses a community rather than one
person to call an individual to Himself. That’s true with "Nate," who
saw a poster on campus about our get-togethers and decided to give us a
try.
Our group of about 40 people is a mixture of college students and twentysomethings in the community. We meet regularly for dinners, sporting activities, spiritual discussions, and the like. Nate felt at home right away. He loved to cook and often provided food for our parties. He enjoyed us and endured our spiritual conversations because he liked what he saw in us. Everyone befriended him and treated him as "one of the gang."
In addition to befriending Nate, we said countless prayers for him and sought to live Christ-centered lives before him. Though he did not agree with us about God, he did find us irresistible to be around.
Early last year, one of our group suggested through an e-mail to the whole group that we try to read through the Bible in a year. Since he was on the group list, Nate received that e-mail. Even though he wasn’t a Christian at the time, he came up to me one night to say he wanted to read through the Bible in a year, too. He also wanted to host and facilitate the group. My heart almost stopped. By the next week about eight to 10 of us, including Nate, met in his apartment. This continued through the entire year.
As the year ended, Nate sent this e-mail to a couple of us in the group (the comments in brackets are mine):
I never said this to anyone before, but back in January I decided to read the Bible because I didn't believe and I wanted to prove to myself that ya'll were crazy. This is not to say that I didn't believe in God, but that this whole business about the Bible and Jesus seemed a bit thin. So I started reading. Mostly because of the supposed age of the folks in the Old Testament, I regressed after about a month. [Nate thought it was sort of foolish to think that people lived as old as is recorded in Genesis.] This was good in a sense. It meant that I was probably right and ya'll were, in fact, crazy.
With renewed self-righteousness (yes, I admit it) I continued reading. Then, because of some people's helpful comments and further reading, I began to shift to the right. [Nate means shifting toward God in reference to a diagram where trusting Christ is the mid-point.] At the same time (about mid-June) I started forays past the mid-point. For a good long bit after I acted like a harmonic oscillator, bouncing back and forth across the mid-point. It was a time of mixed emotions. Thankfully, some time at the beginning of this semester, the oscillations damped out. I ended up here [past the mid-point].
Why so far right? Well, the knowledge I have accumulated through all of you, friends, and church [which he started attending with the group] finally all started to make sense! I not only want to encourage folks to read the Bible in a year, but I want to tell how I became an honest-to-goodness Christian!
God Bless (this time I mean it),
Nate
During Christmas he gave a Bible to his mother and a book on apologetics to his father, and he’s dialoguing with both of them (they are not believers yet). On the four legs of his air flight home and back, he had three spiritual conversations and gave away a book I had given to him some time ago.
After Nate’s recent baptism we has a party for him at our home. About 40 people showed up, including several non-Christian friends from his department. Nate put his testimony together on PowerPoint, and he included a picture of our group and explained that we all had a part to play in bringing him to Christ! What a wonderful evening. If I had been told a year ago that there would be such a night to celebrate God's work in his life, I wouldn’t have believed it!
Nate called that day of baptism the most important day he will ever live, even more important to him than the day he gets married. He is a logical, bright young man, and I believe he means it.
Bob Adgate is with The Navigators' Community Ministry in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Our group of about 40 people is a mixture of college students and twentysomethings in the community. We meet regularly for dinners, sporting activities, spiritual discussions, and the like. Nate felt at home right away. He loved to cook and often provided food for our parties. He enjoyed us and endured our spiritual conversations because he liked what he saw in us. Everyone befriended him and treated him as "one of the gang."
In addition to befriending Nate, we said countless prayers for him and sought to live Christ-centered lives before him. Though he did not agree with us about God, he did find us irresistible to be around.
Early last year, one of our group suggested through an e-mail to the whole group that we try to read through the Bible in a year. Since he was on the group list, Nate received that e-mail. Even though he wasn’t a Christian at the time, he came up to me one night to say he wanted to read through the Bible in a year, too. He also wanted to host and facilitate the group. My heart almost stopped. By the next week about eight to 10 of us, including Nate, met in his apartment. This continued through the entire year.
As the year ended, Nate sent this e-mail to a couple of us in the group (the comments in brackets are mine):
I never said this to anyone before, but back in January I decided to read the Bible because I didn't believe and I wanted to prove to myself that ya'll were crazy. This is not to say that I didn't believe in God, but that this whole business about the Bible and Jesus seemed a bit thin. So I started reading. Mostly because of the supposed age of the folks in the Old Testament, I regressed after about a month. [Nate thought it was sort of foolish to think that people lived as old as is recorded in Genesis.] This was good in a sense. It meant that I was probably right and ya'll were, in fact, crazy.
With renewed self-righteousness (yes, I admit it) I continued reading. Then, because of some people's helpful comments and further reading, I began to shift to the right. [Nate means shifting toward God in reference to a diagram where trusting Christ is the mid-point.] At the same time (about mid-June) I started forays past the mid-point. For a good long bit after I acted like a harmonic oscillator, bouncing back and forth across the mid-point. It was a time of mixed emotions. Thankfully, some time at the beginning of this semester, the oscillations damped out. I ended up here [past the mid-point].
Why so far right? Well, the knowledge I have accumulated through all of you, friends, and church [which he started attending with the group] finally all started to make sense! I not only want to encourage folks to read the Bible in a year, but I want to tell how I became an honest-to-goodness Christian!
God Bless (this time I mean it),
Nate
During Christmas he gave a Bible to his mother and a book on apologetics to his father, and he’s dialoguing with both of them (they are not believers yet). On the four legs of his air flight home and back, he had three spiritual conversations and gave away a book I had given to him some time ago.
After Nate’s recent baptism we has a party for him at our home. About 40 people showed up, including several non-Christian friends from his department. Nate put his testimony together on PowerPoint, and he included a picture of our group and explained that we all had a part to play in bringing him to Christ! What a wonderful evening. If I had been told a year ago that there would be such a night to celebrate God's work in his life, I wouldn’t have believed it!
Nate called that day of baptism the most important day he will ever live, even more important to him than the day he gets married. He is a logical, bright young man, and I believe he means it.
Bob Adgate is with The Navigators' Community Ministry in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
